Reauthoring an existing DVD

[ChrisDavis]

Hello All,

I have been reading here for a couple of weeks and I am still confused. As you can see I am a newby at DVD authoring, but I am not new to computers. Here is what I want to do, maybe someone can point me in the right direction.

While on vacation we purchased a DVD of video the hotel took of our group. It is not encrypted or copyrighted. I have copied it with no problems. What I want to do is to reauthor it with menus and incorporate other footage from the same trip that other people took. The extra video is no problem because it is in AVI format on my HD.

How does one reauthor an existing set of VOB’s?

I have several authoring programs, the best of which seems to be Pinnacle Studio 8, and none of them import VOB’s. I demuxed the VOB’s with no problem and can reaauthor the video, but the audio is AC3 and none of my authoring programs support that.

Do I need a better authoring program?

Is there a piece of demuxing software that will provide me with a regular MPG file complete with audio?

Should I author what I have AVI’s for with menus and a small nothing AVI as a place holder for the original VOB’s and then attempt to build a custom IFO and use the original VOB’s as is?

Please help, I’m lost.

[jel]

hi ChrisDavis and welcome to the forum :D
i believe that DVDLab is an authoring tool that should suit your needs.
from what i have read (sorry, havent had much time to try it out yet)it allows direct input of vob files, so you will not need to demux your existing video.
you can also create simple and complex menus for your project
there is a 30 day trial of the program avaliable at the mediachance website - http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/index.html
good luck with your project
j

[jel]

addendum...
looked into pinnacle studio8 and noticed that it accepts wav and mp3 audio files.
you could also try this link http://dspguru.doom9.org/ for some guides on using BeSweet to convert your demuxed avi file to a mp3 or wav file.
hope this helps
j

[ChrisDavis]

Thanks Jel for your suggestions.

I have been looking at both of the solutions you recommended. I have not had time to download and test DVD Lab yet. I think I need to purchase something. Is this the best authoring software everyone has found?

I did download BeSweet GUI and am still trying to figure out what else besides BeSweet needs to be downloaded to go with it. On my first attempt at AC3 to WAV conversion after I told it where all of the files were located I received an error.

After reading about DVD Lab I have another question. When producing a DVD in Studio 8 using properly encoded MPG source files, the process takes a very long time. Is it safe to assume that Studio 8 is reencoding my files? If so isn’t this reencoding process hurting the original video quality?

[jel]

I think I need to purchase something.
if you go to the download section it states that the product is a fully functional 30 day trial, so you could test it out before having to purchase anything and see if it meets your requirements.
On my first attempt at AC3 to WAV conversion after I told it where all of the files were located I received an error.
you might want to check out the audio encoding forum and run a search on the error you encountered and see if there is a known solution.
When producing a DVD in Studio 8 using properly encoded MPG source files, the process takes a very long time. Is it safe to assume that Studio 8 is reencoding my files? If so isn’t this reencoding process hurting the original video quality?
as i said before i am completely unfamiliar with Studio 8 but ...
define 'a long' time.
because it deals with elementary streams, it needs to remux those into vob files, and depending on the software and complexity, this could take anywhere form 1/2 hour to several hours.
however, studio 8 may also have a default setting where it re-encode your video if the final dvd size will exceed DVD-5 standard, and in this case there will be a reduction in quality (the results will depend on how good the encoder is that comes with the product). you could confirm this by doing some calculations of the total of your elementary streams with a 'muxing' overhead - run a search on the forum for 'calculator' and you mind find a more detailed explanation of this.
hope this helps

[ChrisDavis]

Thanks again Jel.

Mediachance’s web page must be down. I did download and install Version 1.3.1 from another source. I will have to wait until their web page is back up to see if this is the latest or not.

I am having one problem with it though. After using it for a few minutes it will crash with an Illegal Operation Error. Have you ever seen this error from DVD Lab under Windows 98SE? The problem may be related to Windows Explorer. After DVD Lab crashes Windows Explorer no longer functions either.

I finally got BeSweet GUI working. I was being stupid and did not realize the BeSweet was the program to point to for all of the functions. (Azid, Lame, SSRC, Etc.) At first it appeared that separate programs had to be downloaded for each item. All I needed to get besides BeSweet was VOBinput.zip.

On Studio 8, I still believe that it is reencoding no mater what. I tried two compilations, one at 100% quality and another at 90% quality. There would have been no reason to reencode the 100% one and they took about the same length of time, about 4 hours.

[2COOL]

Originally posted by ChrisDavis
Mediachance’s web page must be down. I did download and install Version 1.3.1 from another source. I will have to wait until their web page is back up to see if this is the latest or not.http://www.mediachance.com/

[jel]

they must have been upgrading their site.
new web site

http://dvdlab.net/dvdlab/
and they say it should work on 98, so not sure about your errors....sorry

[ChrisDavis]

OK, got some new information.

DVD Lab was crashing when I would ad an asset (movie). It scans all of the drives and crashed when it seek tested my floppy drive. I installed Microsoft’s Power Toys and from there was able to eliminate the A: drive from My Computer. This kept DVD Lab from scanning that drive and thus kept it from crashing.

I have a new problem with DVD Lab. It imports my existing VOB, but will error out if I try to demultiplex it on import. If I do a quick import with no demultiplex then I can author my new DVD but DVD Lab will error out when trying to compile the DVD. I took a video only file (M2V) that I demuxed using VOB Edit from the same VOB and tried importing it into other authoring softwares. It imported into all of them with no problems with one exception. Dazzle’s DVD Complete gave me a message on import that the file was not DVD compliant. I am not sure what this means. I have looked at the M2V with everything I have and it seems just fine.

Lastly I have used the DVD to VCD SVCD AVI program to reencode the file. This does produce a MPG file that Dazzle says is DVD compliant. I am getting ready to see if DVD Lab likes this file and will go ahead and compile the DVD with no errors. However this kind of defeats my purpose which was to NOT have to reencode the VOB to author a new DVD.


Question, does anyone have any ideas what I might look at to see why Dazzle says the M2V file I demuxed from my original VOB is not DVD compliant? The resolution is 720 X 480. DVD Lab says the bitrate is 9860. The only thing I noticed is that most authoring programs misreported the length of the clip. It is 15 minutes and it only shows 50 seconds in the cheap authoring programs.